{"id":5839,"date":"2014-03-29T11:22:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T11:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=5839"},"modified":"2014-03-29T11:22:04","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T11:22:04","slug":"weekly-photo-challenge-street-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=5839","title":{"rendered":"Weekly photo challenge: Street life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not old enough to have taken these photos.\u00a0 Lol.\u00a0 They’re from my father’s war album of photos taken in 1941-42.\u00a0 He was sent to the Middle East for several months and brought back photos of the places he passed through.\u00a0 He wasn’t always the one behind the camera;\u00a0 some of them came from friends in swaps, so I can’t know who captured these images.<\/p>\n

The first one is a snatch of street life during the early years of the war in Alexandria, Egypt.\u00a0 Not much traffic!<\/p>\n

In the mid-19th century, under the French, this was the Place des Consuls, where several Consulates were situated in what was then a cosmopolitan Alexandria.\u00a0 It was then renamed Mohammed Ali Square in 1873 after the statue of the Ottoman governor, Mohammed Ali, was placed in the square (on the right of the photo).\u00a0 British naval forces bombarded the area in 1882 and destroyed most of the original buildings.\u00a0 It’s now Midan al-Tahrir, Tahrir Square (same as the famous square in Cairo).\u00a0 In English, it’s Liberation Square.<\/p>\n

\"Mohamed<\/a>
Mohammed Ali Square, Alexandria, Egypt, c1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The photo below is from the same album, but is unidentified.\u00a0 It’s in the same era, and probably in Egypt, definitely in the Middle East, definitely during the war.\u00a0 I like the perspective, the way the street curves into the distance behind buildings, and the way the buildings are flush with the street.\u00a0 It’s not so much about street life since everyone seems to be inside except for a woman and two children quietly making their way\u00a0 home.\u00a0 The scalloped detail on the rooflines is particularly clear in monochrome, as is the mass of (what looks to be) a dovecote on the right.<\/p>\n

\"Street<\/a>
Street scene, 1940s, Egypt?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m very thankful these days that my family kept these photos.\u00a0 They’re possibly more meaningful now that several decades of history have passed, and we can compare the scenes then and now (thanks to all the images online).\u00a0 Try looking for current photos of Tahrir Square in Alexandria.\u00a0 The statue of Mohammed Ali is still there, but the square looks very different otherwise.\u00a0 But perhaps black and white hides some of the grit of street life.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not old enough to have taken these photos.\u00a0 Lol.\u00a0 They’re from my father’s war album of photos taken in 1941-42.\u00a0 He was sent to the Middle East for several months and brought back photos of the places he passed through.\u00a0 He wasn’t always the one behind the camera;\u00a0 some of them came from friends … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Weekly photo challenge: Street life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4,5,585,6,30,586,587,7,8,21,568,155],"class_list":["post-5839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-alexandria","tag-black-white","tag-egypt","tag-mohammed-ali-square","tag-mohammed-ali-square-alexandria","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-postaday-2014","tag-wwii"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}